Aloha

IMO - the trans stuff feels like a moral panic, like on the same level as the Satanic Panic of the 80's - or the violence in video games panic, or any number of other things - I'm just waiting for the storm to blow over.

All of this is made much worse by social media too, which fans the flames hotter than it ever could have been before.

I'm more skeptical of that statement - sure, I think some are aware.

Some are just blind partisans, otherwise those places wouldn't have been voting for team red for the last 35 years or so.

There is also the paradox of the low information voter too, which seemed to have broken for Trump 2:1 - that does concern me some.

Trump also has a huge benefit with low information voters, he spews noise all the time which the news media covers with baited breath.

I call it the "Trump says alot of things" problem - it allowed people to paint whatever they wanted him to be onto him by essentially cherry picking the various things he's said to make up their own collage view of whatever they wanted him to be.

It's like you and I are reading from the same book! - If I just go off what I see online, most of the loudest anti-trans voices, and most of the racists, I'm more or less convinced have never met or gotten to know any trans people or any black people. It's a certain amount of willful ignorance on their part.

You're more or less spot on.

It doesn't matter that Republicans are slightly more to blame then Democrats in the thinning out of rural places - the folks who live there, IMO, see both parties as the same thing.

They remember how their towns were when they were young, they had a bustling locally owned and operated main street full of commercial activity, they also often had a factory, or mill which provided good jobs too.

Some of the parallel commenters here only think rural = farming, and thats not true. If you look at the Carolinas for example, there were textile and lumber mills - farming there is still more or less as healthy as its every been - but all of those other sources of employment which brought money in from outside of the community are gone.

This story repeats itself in a bunch of places, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan, and across the greater west too.

This rot started well before Reagan though - it's something I've called "the 1971 problem". If you go on a road trip across rural America, you'll rarely see a locally funded building (aka, not a chain store), built after 1971-3 - with the notable exception to this being places with a military base, college, or some other government facility - and I think the causes are multiple here, post vietnam drawdown of forces, détente, the 1973 oil crisis, stagflation, the Nixon shock, then later the so-called peace dividend after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war.

Globalization thru the 80's-90's just made all of these issues worse, and hollowed out manufacturing too - now all of this this effected cities too, to some extent, but as you mention, cities got benefits of globalization - more information economy jobs, greater wealth flowing in from the financialization of everything, which while didnt replace the jobs lost in manufacturing, did replace the wealth generated by it. (there are even more things I've not really touched on - like the steady decrease in local ownership of businesses, and the corresponding civic rot that kicks in when this happens)

There is another issue I also want to touch on here - "jobs for regular people" - for a significant portion of the population, the best job they can hope for is a decent factory job, a job in the trades - or more likely today, a not so great service job. One of the reasons I want to onshore manufacturing is that we need those higher quality jobs to ensure the benefits of our economy are shared more broadly.

I'm a proponent of tariffs as a way to solve this - not what Trump is doing which are penalty tariffs - but what I've called cost adjustment tariffs - tariffs that adjust the price of imported manufactured goods to the same level as if they were made here, where you price in labor differences overall regulatory burden, environmental and climate rules, and other factors - on a fundamental level, I feel it is immoral to export all the externalities from manufacturing to another country (pollution being the primary one I'm thinking of).

While tariffs, even at some low level may result in slower GDP growth. People cannot eat or pay their rent with GDP - a more ideal answer (one I support) is UBI, but UBI doesn't appear to politically possible - and there is also value in being able to do work where you can see the fruits of your labor (both in the physical good you've made - and the pay check you get at the end of the week), for good or for bad, it gives you self worth and a feeling of purpose too.

So I get why rural voters vote for Trump, and its because my side has failed to understand the economic pain that anyplace that isn't a tier 1/2/3 city has experienced over the last 50 years - and what their needs are for the future. In the end, I think Trump will fail them, and probably make everything else worse - but he's the horse that the American people who could be bothered to show up to vote picked (I'll note much to my consternation, that 3m less people voted in 2024 vs 2020).

Manufacturing generally provides higher margin than service jobs, so the generally provide better benefits.

This is an issue we've encountered in our products - and I've seen it impact Intel graphics processors, as far back as gen 8.

Sure - but they're a politically possible one.

I'm a big fan of UBI - love it, make all my librarian bits very happy! - but I also acknowledge the political reality of it.

I also do see the value in work, people derive significant mental health benefits from meaningful work too, that shouldn't be discounted.

If every high wage country did the same thing - and specifically targeted low regulation places - it would. I'm certain that the US can build something that is competitive in Europe, and most of the Americas.

Also flatly, people cannot pay their rent, or eat GDP, its possible to have lower GDP growth and still be more prosperous country, most of the GDP loss will be to upper income earners.

Not particularly, no.

I do think they want to create more manufacturing jobs, which in general are a better quality than service ones however.

I want a better quality of jobs, in my experience service oriented industry often have a thinner margin than hardware.

Like walmart is the largest private employer in the US, the working conditions, pay and benefits one gets from working at walmart isnt comparable to what we used to give what was the largest private employer 50 years ago (which was AT&T) - nor can the margins that walmart generates support those kinds of generous pay and benefits either.

This story is repeated a 100 times over thruout the US - while yes we have full employment, its in service jobs (retail, food service, hospitality) and not in manufacturing or other high paying jobs.

The second thing I'm trying to deal with, for lack of a more polite way (without lapsing too far into euphemism) to put it is "jobs for stupid people" (edit, in hindsight the best way to put this is "good jobs for everyone") - for a significant portion of the population, the best job they can hope for in terms of wages and benefits is working on a production line in a factory, while you and I (presumably) work in some sort of information job - thats just not an option for a significant portion of the population, and until we solve that we're going to keep having an issue with a K-shaped economy.

But a 25% tariff isnt going to do that, its just going to make things much more expensive - its another thing if you're trying to do cost adjustment tariffs - and just price in all the externalities (labor cost, regulatory regime, environmental rules, and human rights costs) that US manufacturing must bear - and make it a level playing field - thats not what this is.

The issue with trying to do this is tariffs are both extremely regressive and wont generate enough revenue to move the needle.

It'd be one thing if we were combining tariffs with a UBI - that can balance out most of the regressive effects of it, but we're not doing that.

Cost adjustment tariffs is my argument -

You use tariffs to equalize actual costs plus a little (environmental/climate rules, labor costs, regulatory environment, human rights, etc) between the US and a foreign country. It doesn't have to be a huge amount of increase either, 5-12% - and probably wouldn't apply to most developed countries, because it is based on that matrix of total cost of doing business.

As far as rationale here - I personally want to onshore as much production as I can - but you can't start with finished goods necessarily, you often have to start with the base supportive industries needed - but even I acknowledge that may not be practical for everything.

But, to do what I want to do is a decades long process and must be done strategically and carefully - blanket tariffs dont do that, and are just a blowtorch to the delicate interconnections of a modern economy. Like targeting agricultural goods is absurd, for example - and will just raise prices for no tangible good.

I'm pro tariff - but 25% tariffs are absurd, at most you need 10%-12% in narrowly targeted categories to ensure re-onshoring of production.

Thanks for posting that, it was an interesting watch!

He did make it to 101 - https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/latimes/name/irving-lin...

Yes, there is often manufacturing engineers on duty 24/7 and of course, line management.

This is probably an unpopular opinion - but if you're going to rename the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of the Americas is a much better name than Gulf of America.

But its stupid, and Trump making a sideshow.

Thanks for sharing that

The market structure is weird, but it works more or less.

I think you're wrong to presume that the TUI would have remained static at DOS 3.3 or sh as it was in the mid 80's - something like fish would have evolved anyhow, menu driven TUI's can be amazing, and efficient.

Marriott uses a TUI based PMS at most of their hotels, it has a learning curve like a hockey stick, but once you learn it, you can literally check a guest in 5+ min faster than using Lightspeed (what most Sheratons used), its just that much faster - a big part of that is typeahead, you dont have to wait for the screen to populate to make the next selection, something that isnt true for GUI's.

Because someone submitted it, and the collective here found it interesting.

I know Southern California Edison had 50hz power, I always used to find old clocks and radios as a kid with a conversion sticker.

I've always kept an eye out for good papers about the effort to convert, but they're hard to find.

We have more than three interconnections that are not in synchronous connection to each other.

They can share power and are somewhat connected with HVDC interconnections however.

What, no FM Stereo?

It can be either!

* If the test involves milk, then it is added to the bowl before pouring the infused tea into it, unless that is contrary to the organisation's normal practice.

* If milk is added after the pouring of tea, the standard notes that best results are obtained when the liquid is between 65 and 80 °C

My organization tends to prefer milk after, But I'm a silly yank who has lots of wrong opinions on a great deal of things (or so I've been told).

I think it was the equivalent of a tax stamp

The thing that astounded me about these things was the sheer amount of heat the screen threw off, you could feel it radiating from the screens when you walked by.

This is very very interesting.

It reminds me of how furries treat IP, art theft is a big no-no, but sharing is encouraged and a community norm.

Yes, I missed it the first time too - there is a big download button on the left side of the webpage.

Linked for convenience- https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/epdf/10.1287/orsc.1070.03...